Lectionary: 23

Reading 1:

Gn 9:8-15

God said to Noah and to his sons with him:

“See, I am now establishing my covenant with you

and your descendants after you

and with every living creature that was with you:

all the birds, and the various tame and wild animals

that were with you and came out of the ark.

I will establish my covenant with you,

that never again shall all bodily creatures be destroyed

by the waters of a flood;

there shall not be another flood to devastate the earth.”

God added:

“This is the sign that I am giving for all ages to come,

of the covenant between me and you

and every living creature with you:

I set my bow in the clouds to serve as a sign

of the covenant between me and the earth.

When I bring clouds over the earth,

and the bow appears in the clouds,

I will recall the covenant I have made

between me and you and all living beings,

so that the waters shall never again become a flood

to destroy all mortal beings.”

Responsorial Psalm:

Ps 25:4-5, 6-7, 8-9

R. (cf. 10) Your ways, O Lord, are love and truth to those who keep your covenant.

Your ways, O LORD, make known to me;

teach me your paths,

Guide me in your truth and teach me,

for you are God my savior.

R. Your ways, O Lord, are love and truth to those who keep your covenant.

Remember that your compassion, O LORD,

and your love are from of old.

In your kindness remember me,

because of your goodness, O LORD.

R. Your ways, O Lord, are love and truth to those who keep your covenant.

Good and upright is the LORD,

thus he shows sinners the way.

He guides the humble to justice,

and he teaches the humble his way.

R. Your ways, O Lord, are love and truth to those who keep your covenant.

Reading II

1 Pt 3:18-22

Beloved:

Christ suffered for sins once,

the righteous for the sake of the unrighteous,

that he might lead you to God.

Put to death in the flesh,

he was brought to life in the Spirit.

In it he also went to preach to the spirits in prison,

who had once been disobedient

while God patiently waited in the days of Noah

during the building of the ark,

in which a few persons, eight in all,

were saved through water.

This prefigured baptism, which saves you now.

It is not a removal of dirt from the body

but an appeal to God for a clear conscience,

through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,

who has gone into heaven

and is at the right hand of God,

with angels, authorities, and powers subject to him.

Verse Before the Gospel

Mt 4:4b

One does not live on bread alone,

but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.

Gospel

Mk 1:12-15

The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert,

and he remained in the desert for forty days,

tempted by Satan.

He was among wild beasts,

and the angels ministered to him.

After John had been arrested,

Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God:

“This is the time of fulfillment.

The kingdom of God is at hand.

Repent, and believe in the gospel.”

My dear Holy Family family:

Today's 5 sentence - long Gospel from Mark can easily provide an entire year’s worth of homilies. Luckily for you, I’ll only be giving one. Today’s reflection comes from the first 2 sentences of the Gospel. It is a broad-brush look at the devil’s work from the Garden of Eden through the temptation of Christ all the way to us in this year’s Lent.

There are 3 simple points I’d like to make today. They are:

1. The devil exists.
2. Adam encountered Satan, gave into him, and Original Sin was inflicted on us as a consequence. Jesus encountered Satan in the desert and won our freedom from the bondage of Original Sin.
3. In undoing the effects of Adam’s sin, Jesus was tempted to the maximum extent it would be possible to tempt a human. Jesus, fully man as well as fully divine, resisted the world’s greatest temptations yet chose to die instead in an excruciating Roman execution.

Let’s look at each of these points in more detail:

Point number one: the devil exists. Jesus had to deal with the devil many times throughout the scriptures; and each of us have to deal with him every day of our lives. Many of us don't talk much about the devil or we deny that he even exists. This is exactly what the devil wants, and where he runs freely. These are souls that are his, without doing any work to get them. Many people in our families or circles of friends or coworkers are likely fallen-away Catholics or lack any kind of faith. Some of us probably know people who proclaim to be some kind of witch or practice some type of New Age religion or occultism. And to make matters worse, today’s children grow up in our secular world, not adequately trained their in their faith, prayer and the Mass, and so wind up living a life vulnerable to the devil’s wiles. It’s a mindset you see on signs that say something like “my body, my rules”. Yes, the devil definitely exists and we should be willing to admit that reality.

Point number two: Adam gave into the devil’s temptations and lost; Jesus struggled with Satan and won. Both encounters are starkly different. Let’s compare the temptation of Adam and Eve and the temptation of Christ. The temptation of Adam and Eve took place in the midst of the beauty and abundance of Paradise. The temptation of Jesus took place in the bare desert. Adam and Eve wanted for nothing; our Lord was in a state of painful hunger. Satan tempted our first parents to gluttony, pride and the lust of the eyes; and succeeded. He tried to lure our Lord to the same three lusts; and was overcome. Angels came and drove Adam and Eve from Paradise; whereas angels came and ministered to Jesus in the desert.

So, Jesus is the New Adam, winning the war against the devil where Adam and Eve failed. As a result of the Fall of Adam and Eve, Jesus was sent to “undo” the sin of Adam and Eve.

Point number three: Jesus knew the heights of temptation but chose instead to die on the cross, poverty-stricken and humiliated. We need to think about this, to let this sink in: Jesus was offered the very heights of everything the earth has to offer, yet chose the exact opposite of what the devil was offering, including crucifixion.

Did you ever think about that? Did you ever think that the reason Jesus turned down all the world's civilizations and all the pleasures and power that comes with it but then suffer a ghastly death of epic proportion was in order to show His perfect and infinite love for all of us?

Jesus, being God, could have simply snapped his divine fingers and, being God that could've been sufficient for opening the gates of heaven. But Jesus wasn't about to be merely "sufficient". Jesus suffered and died, humiliated, on a cross; there were no halfway measures taken by Jesus to show the depth of His live for us.

When Jesus was being scourged, crowned with thorns or carrying the cross do you think He remembered the human life the devil offered him? The human part of Jesus probably had these memories flash in His mind as the divine part of Jesus insisted on continuing his journey with the cross all the way to Golgotha.

So where does this leave us, my dear family? It leaves us here at Lent, now thinking about the unspeakable depth of God’s love for us. Does this knowledge help us live our Lent a little bit better? Does it help us on our daily struggle against temptation? I hope so.

If you will allow me, a few parting words about temptation and the devil to think about this Lent: The devil must work within the confines of human freedom. We all have the freedom to say “no” to temptation. The devil cannot overwhelm, suppress or destroy the human freedom God gave us. Rather, the devil wants and needs us to actively choose against God and it is essential for everyone who wishes to avoid temptation, deception and the desolation coming from the devil to seek out a Christian church, particularly the Catholic Church, and to affirm the efficacy of reason. If you think about the temptation before you plunge in, you’ll realize it’s just another empty promise in the devil’s never-ending hall of mirrors.

Reason is something the devil desperately wants us to avoid, because if we use reason and we know the faith Jesus gave us, we will have everything we need to avoid temptation.

Let us pray.

Lord Jesus, you showed us how to renounce the temptations of the devil when, in the desert, you prayed and fasted for 40 days. You used human reason and faith in Your Father to dispatch Satan back to Hell where he belongs. Please help us, Jesus, to grow in faith and reason this Lent so that we may do the same. Amen.